MIAMI, Fla. â Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wants young children to think of citizenship in a different way.
The justice sat down with Grammy Award winning singer Gloria Estefan in Miami and told a crowd of hundreds about the idea for her next children's book, which will be about civic participation.
Sotomayor said her preferred title would be âHow To Be a Hero," and the book will portray acts of civic participation as heroic.
âPeople think of citizenship as a formal title of belonging to a country,â she said. âCitizenship with a small âcâ is what we are in every community that we choose to live in: whether itâs your building, your block, the community of the church, the community of your school.â
Appointed to the court by President Barack Obama in 2009, Sotomayor said she wants to use her platform as a justice to inspire children through books, this time by helping âkids understand what it takes to change the world.â
âEveryone of us has a responsibility to make that community better. And thatâs what makes heroesâ itâs those people who see something wrong in their community and say âI will work to change that,ââ she said.
Sotomayor has kept busy writing content for kids, and she notes that her works come out simultaneously in Spanish because she grew up in New York City to Puerto Rican parents speaking the language but not finding enough literature in her mother tongue.
After her 2013 memoir, âMy Beloved World,â came out, she wrote an abridged version for middle school readers. Then she wrote an autobiographical picture book, âTurning Pages,â in 2018 and her most recent picture book, âJust Ask!,â published last year, about children with âlife challengesâ such as attention deficit disorder, autism, blindness and diabetes. Sotomayor was diagnosed with diabetes at age 7.
Sotomayor told the crowd Tuesday not to scold children when they stare at people with deformities.
âTeach them not to have pity but to have curiosity,â she said.
Sotomayor sat for only a few minutes with Estefan, and then both women walked along the rows of the Temple Judea synagogue in the Coral Gables suburb. She shook hands with many but only took written questionsâ and hugsâ from children.
The Cuban-born singer read aloud a question from a 5-year-old girl before asking her to approach Sotomayor. âHow can I stop being shy?â Estefan read.
Sotomayor looked at the girl and smiled. âYou just started,â she said.